Cracked List: 6 Everyday Words With Disturbing Alternate Meanings

02.05.09 | 44 Comments

You will never say “I enjoyed a hearty helping of oats with Russians and Italians at a quaint cottage” the same way again. Promise.

So the whole news world was up in arms recently because of this newscast referring to Barack and Michelle Obama “fisting” each other in the White House, the speaker blissfully unaware of the unsettling slang definition of the term.

And while we can all laugh at that lady and her obliviousness, the truth is there are all sorts of everyday words that, in the right crowd, will draw the same muffled laughter as the fisting gaffe up there. Such as…

#6. Cottage

You Know It As:

A small, quaint house favored by the idle, rich, hobbits and humans in Warcraft.

“I think my favorite part of pissing is that we get to have sex with each other afterwards.

Wait, What?

“Cottaging” has a rich and storied history, dating back to the turn of the 20th century. At that time, “cottage” was just a euphemism for a public lavatory, due to the overwhelming similarity of comfortable out-of-town lodgings to cramped, piss-stained cubicles.

Over the next few years however, the homosexual community started using cottages for illicit encounters with such regularity that by 1920 the definition of the euphemism had been amended to include the gay stuff. Both the word and the practice are still active today, and recently enjoyed a brief renaissance following the arrest of U.S. senator Larry Craig, who we here at Cracked salute for his dedication to lexographical preservation.

How To Use It In A Sentence:

“So Vince, Todd, Blake and I were all thinking about getting a cottage together. It’ll be a tight fit, but I’m sure we can all squeeze in somehow.”